Social Media Recruitment – The Strengths and Dangers of Using Social Media for Recruitment

If there’s one thing that social media technology is great at, it’s finding people.

Whenever you sign up for a social media site, you either enter personal information or (more likely these days) your existing social media graph is taken from other sites you’re registered to. Similarities between your social graph and others automatically put you in a category with them. So if you like chili pepper and someone else likes chili pepper – no matter what else either of you is into, if there’s a society for the appreciation of chili peppers then you’ll both see it pop up on your adverts bar.

With the advent of LinkedIn and many other similar sites, employers and recruitment agencies have started to realise this power could be harnessed to provide likely candidates for open positions. From interests, to past job titles, to industry experience, key points on the social graph of an “ideal” candidate are index-linked to the actual points appearing on the graph of the applicants. In theory the one with the most positive correlations is best suited for the position.

Furthermore, this technology can also be used to actively fish for good candidates. Instead of simply looking at people who’ve come forward for your role, you can identify people who would be ideal for it and offer them the chance to be interviewed for it. You can also use social media advertising techniques with laser precision for targeting potential candidates and groups of talent.

The above techniques can clearly be very beneficial, particularly for roles in which an unusual combination of skill sets would be an advantage. Being able to target your employees in this way means less time wasted on setting up interviews with ultimately unsuitable people; less money spent on advertising that ends up with the wrong people. In other words, social media streamlines your advertising for people in the same way that it streamlines your advertising of your own products…………..

Social Media Recruitment Training for HR

Before Christmas, we helped the team of HR managers at Property Consortium and this is what they said….

Cheryl Parsons
Senior HR Officer

“Peter came to our offices in Culmhead to provide a half day training course on Social Media Advertising and Recruiting, Peter provides a comfortable and supportive training environment to develop your online social media skills and knowledge. The training is extremely interactive and results driven. I highly recommend the course as we found it very productive and helpful.”

Here is the course outline we gave them, but we design the courses and support for each client individually. So yours will be unique to your team’s requirements.

● Social Media Advertising for Recruitment

● Social Media and Digital Recruitment Strategies and Techniques

● Recruitment SEO for your website

● LinkedIn – recruitment strategies and techniques

● Facebook – recruitment strategies and techniques

● Twitter – recruitment strategies and techniques

● Google + – recruitment strategies and techniques

● You Tube – recruitment strategies and techniques

● Other recruitment social media

● Using X Ray search in social media

……….So what are the dangers?

Well for a start not every perfect candidate is quantifiable, and often you’ll find that the best candidates are completely unquantifiable. It’s the fresh perspective they bring that makes them so good at reorganising the way your company or your department works.

There are people – believe it or not – who don’t pay much attention to social media, who don’t have social media pages, and who have no intention of getting involved even with social media for business. This tends to be the high end sector of the job market, where existing personal contacts and word of mouth (exactly the same things that social media streams embody) have always been good enough to lead into the next position. When you’re looking to hire an experienced MD or a high level executive, you have to ask: is this person likely to be on a social network yet?

If one is not careful, they can ruin their chances of being recruited if they contain inappropriate or concerning information on their social media sites. However, if the recruiter feels one is representing themselves in a positive manner, this will increase their chances of being recruited.

Remember too that using social media recruitment to find your ideal candidate presupposes your ability to define the perfect candidate. While you are of course well placed to understand your industry and the requirements of your role, you are always at risk of losing good options through tagging demographics the best candidates don’t actually show.

Marketing, Social Media and Digital Marketing Virtual Support And Help Desk

We offer a wide range of marketing, SEO, social media marketing, social media recruitment and digital marketing support and training, which you can access via telephone, email or video conference via Skype and Google hangouts. Our support covers the full range of platforms such as Forums, LinkedIn, Wikis, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, to name a few.

Our help desk and support offers you a single point of access for information and assistance on all aspects of marketing strategy, social media strategy, social media marketing, social media recruitment, SEO and digital marketing as well as detailed monitoring or your social media | digital environment and campaign ROI, should you require it.

The Strengths and Dangers of Using Social Media for Recruitment
If there’s one thing that social media technology is great at, it’s finding people.
Whenever you sign up for a social media site, you either enter personal information or (more likely these days) your existing social media graph is taken from other sites you’re registered to. Similarities between your social graph and others automatically put you in a category with them. So if you like chili pepper and someone else likes chili pepper – no matter what else either of you is into, if there’s a society for the appreciation of chili peppers then you’ll both see it pop up on your adverts bar.
With the advent of LinkedIn and many other similar sites, employers and recruitment agencies have started to realise